Higher Ed Data Stories

Yesterday's big news, of course, was the announcement of "The Coalition," the curiously-named group of about 80 colleges and universities making for very strange bedfellows.  I wrote a little bit about it here . Today I came across a little data set that contained information about Pell graduation rates and non-Pell graduation rates, and I thought it an interesting opportunity to look at it in light of yesterday's news.  So, over my lunch hour, I did (yes, this software is really that easy to use. You should try it out .) It's presented here in Tableau Story Points.  Just use the gray boxes across the top to look at the different views of the data.  Most of it should be self-explanatory, but if not, leave a comment and I'll reply to it. FYI, there were several schools from "The Coalition" who did not supply Pell Grant Grad Rate data. In alpha order, they are: Columbia (NY) Hamilton (NY) Harvard (MA) Rutgers (NJ) And you can ask them ...

Maybe  you're too young to remember the Ronald Reagan presidency, but one of the things I remember most is the " Peacekeeper Missile ." People were incensed by what they believed to be political doublespeak worthy of the book 1984 .  Missiles were objects of destruction, not something you associated with peace.  Change the language, change the discussion. So today, this happened.  In what Inside Higher Ed is calling " An Admissions Revolution ," eighty of the country's top colleges have formed a "Coalition," (a nice political sounding word: I mean, they form coalitions in Canada, so it must be nice, right?) to create a new application as well as a new portfolio system for students, who can start as early as the 9th grade, to assemble documents and other resources, not unlike my suggestion about Google managing the application process.  The goal, ostensibly, is to get more low-income and first generation students interested and ready to go to col...